Mother As the Giving Tree: Reflections on Conditional Acceptance

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. Last Monday, I attended an online meeting for adults who spent time in the NICU as infants. It touched me on many levels. One thing that was mentioned was the fact that most NICU parents go through their own emotional process, which then is passed on somehow to their child in the NICU and beyond. For example, many parents back in my day and before didn’t know whether their baby would survive, so they didn’t attach to their babies as they normally would have.

I was also reminded of something I read in the book The Emotionally Absent Mother. In it, motherhood is compared to the giving tree in Shel Sinverstein’s writing. I don’t think I’ve ever read this piece, but its point is that the tree keeps on giving and giving and expects nothing in return.

I have been thinking about my parents’ attitude to me as a multiply-disabled person. When I suffered a brain bleed in the NICU, my father questioned my neonatologist about my quality of life and what they were doing to me. “We’re keeping her alive,” the doctor bluntly replied. My father has always been adamant to me that he wouldn’t have wanted me if I’d had an intellectual disability, because “you can’t talk with those”.

I have always felt the pressure of conditional acceptance. I’ve shared this before, but when I was in Kindergarten or first grade, it was already made clear to me that, at age eighteen, i’d leave the house and go to university. I tell myself every parent has expectations and dreams for their child. This may be so, but most parents don’t abandon their children when these children don’t meet their expectations and certainly not when it’s inability, not unwillingness, that drives these children not to fulfill their parents’ dreams. Then again, my parents say it’s indeed unwillingness on my part.

I still question myself on this. Am I really unable to live on my own and go to university? My wife says yes, I am unable. Sometimes though, I wish it were within my power to make my parents be on my side. Then again, the boy in Shel Silverstein’s writing didn’t have to do anything to make the tree support him either.

I’m linking up with #WWWhimsy. I was also inspired to write this post when I saw Esther’s writing prompt for this week, which is “giving”.

Good Mother Messages

Posted on by Astrid

I am currently working in the book The Emotionally Absent Mother by Jasmin Lee Cori. My first response to it was: why mothers? I was, after all, raised primarily by my father in my early years. Since my mother didn’t breastfeed me, I’m not even sure she was there much at all when I was an infant. Besides, I spent the first three months of my life in hospital, so didn’t have either parent as a primary caretaker then. As such, my main reason for downloading the book was to work through emotional hurts from my past regardless of which parent inflicted them on me.

In the first chapter, the author talks about “good enough” parenting. She goes on to list “good mother messages” children raised by good enough mothers received. Today, I want to share these and my thoughts on them.

1. I’m glad that you’re here. This message shows that as a child we’re wanted. It isn’t black-or-white though, since many children feel unwanted at times, but this message can be countered by a greater sense of being wanted. Some clear memories pop up into my mind now. The countless times my parents, mainly my mother, threatened to institutionalize me when I attended a school for the blind as a non-residential student from age nine to twelve. Also, when I was fourteen, I was rejected for a summer camp and had a meltdown. At some point, my parents were angry and so was I. I said they’d just as well put me in a children’s home, at which point my father said: “None wants you.”

2. I see you. This message is conveyed through our parents knowing what we’re interested in, how we feel about things, etc. I am not sure about this one. On a deep, emotional level I feel consistently unseen, but no clear memories pop up. My father was relatively tuned in to my interests.

3. You are special to me. The author points out here that this message needs to be paired with us being seen for who we are. Yes, so true. I was seen as special, a genius even, by my mother, but only for superficial achievements such as calendar calculation. I hated this.

4. I respect you. God, this one strikes a chord. The author explains that a parent who sends this message, allows the child to discover and express their unique self rather than having to conform to the parents’ blueprint for them. One particular memory comes up, which isn’t a traumatic memory but is a funny example of the larger scheme of things. When I thought I was a lesbian at age fifteen, I tried to figure out whether my parents would be open to this before coming out. My mother said: “I accept you as you are, even if you turn out to be a conservative.” Well, that said enough: she didn’t accept me as I am.

5. I love you. As the author says, some children hear this multiple times a day, while others go a lifetime without hearing these words. They also need to be felt as sincere. In my case, my mother would often say “I love you” when we’d just had an argument. She was physically affectionate, but it was usually in a ritualized way. Like, I was given a goodnight kiss each night until I was at least twelve. One memory in this respect, happened when I was around eleven. My parents required me to read a certain number of pages of a Braille book. If I didn’t finish them, I could go to bed but without a kiss or any affection. This is probably a relatively minor incident, but it is again a sign of how affection was used generally.

6. Your needs are important to me. You can turn to me for help. This one is a mixed bag. I was helped, yes, sometimes too much so, but I wasn’t taught how to do things on my own. Then once I turned eighteen, my parents expected me to be fully independent. My needs are currently definitely not important to my parents. As I sometimes half-jokingly say, they fed me for eighteen years and then they thought their job was done.

7. I am here for you. I will make time for you. See above. Until I was eighteen, my parents were a relatively consistent presence in my life. They never actually institutionalized me and they’re still together. Then when I turned eighteen, they said I had to take care of myself and more or less vanished. This was clear to me from an early age on, too. As my father at one point told me, a family is like a business, it has to be run efficiently.

8. I’ll keep you safe. I am not sure. This one feels odd on a deep, emotional level. One memory that pops up though, is my parents consistently blaming me for being the victim of bullying. My parents also were pretty much the opposite of helicopter parents. Like I said, they were hardly involved in my life past age eighteen. Not that I care much now, but it feels as though I was hardly protected by my parents. The author says that those who don’t receive this message, feel small and unable to explore the world. Yes!

9. You can rest in me. I’m not sure. I don’t understand this message really. It conveys feeling at home with your parents. Definitely not. However, I don’t feel like I can be at home with anyone.

10. I delight in you. This one is mostly conveyed in non-verbal ways, of which I’m not aware due to being blind. As a result, I’m not sure of this one.